


Nowhere

by slimecrime



Category: Promare (2019)
Genre: A Normal Amount Of Angst, M/M, Multi, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, everyone is having a bad time sorry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-14 12:35:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28545717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slimecrime/pseuds/slimecrime
Summary: Lio, Gueira and Meis try to figure out how to be human again, stuck in the middle of nowhere.
Relationships: Gueira/Meis (Promare), Lio Fotia & Gueira & Meis, Lio Fotia/Gueira/Meis
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	Nowhere

**Author's Note:**

> I keep trying to write things other than angst but it doesn't work I'm sorry

This was the first time anyone, besides the Burnish who followed him, had really ever heard the leader of Mad Burnish speak. While his mug shot had been shown upon his initial arrest, nothing else had been known about him prior. He was an entirely unknown figure in the public eye and had intended to keep it that way. Though, of course, since their faces and stories had become national news, all three leaders of Mad Burnish had developed some sort of following.

However, it wasn’t until almost 3 years after the Second World Blaze, after the long and painful process of rebuilding and after some of the most immediately pressing legal proceedings were finally coming to a close, that the leader of Mad Burnish would speak on TV. He’d spent much of the past couple years in a hectic whirlwind of hospitalization, interrogation rooms, a few jail cells, house arrest, courtrooms and finally witness protection.

While the proceedings of the trial against the Foresight Foundation, which he participated in, were televised, he had yet to agree to be interviewed and did all he could to avoid being filmed.

Gueira and Meis had barely seen him, as the three of them were often kept separate and moved around the continent like chess pieces. 

The two were only with each other in this hotel room for a short while, with plenty of guards to keep it that way. They would be moved again at the end of the week. They weren’t sure when they’d be allowed to see each other again, but they were both getting pretty tired of the lifestyle. 

“We should just get married so they can’t keep separating us,” Meis said, trying to make it sound like a joke and cracking open a beer.

“How quickly can we do that?” Gueira responded, bluntly and tiredly. 

_Witness Protection_ felt much more like some sort of elaborate moving jail. 

They laid in the clean but strange bed, Gueira’s head on Meis’s chest. The glow of the TV filled the room, with the interview scheduled just after the next commercial break. Meis held his partner’s hand tightly and stared blankly at a shampoo commercial they’d already seen three other times since they’d met up. 

“I know we said we weren’t ever gonna do that,” Meis said. “But I want rights to see you. I want rights to you in the hospital.”

Gueira took a deep breath. He rubbed Mei’s knuckle with his thumb, felt the familiar roughness of his hands.

“Things are different now,” he said. “We don’t have to change, though. It’s just some paperwork.” 

Meis took a sip of beer and then laid his chin on top of Gueira’s head.

“I was always scared that marriage would make me bitter,” he said. “But I don’t want to lose you. I don’t think I’m gonna.”

“Who’s gotta buy the ring, then?” Gueira said. “How do we officiate it?” 

“I’ll buy you a ring,” Meis said. “I brought it up.” 

They both stared through a candy commercial, knowing that the interview would be on in just a minute or so. 

“Doesn’t have to be a lot,” Gueira mumbled, his eyes falling tiredly. “Get one out of a vending machine or something.” 

Meis laughed. Or, it was more like a little amused huff, but for Meis that was a laugh.

“Oh, I can get you something better than that,” he said. 

“Mmm…” Gueira just groaned. 

Meis took in a deep sigh, his chest rising and falling under Gueira’s head. 

Then the news station came back. They started their new segment. Gueira’s heart was electric and he could feel that Meis’s was as well, nervous for what they’d find. As much as they hadn’t seen each other, they felt like they barely had any more contact with Lio than the general public, having only really seen him in recordings of his testimony against Foresight. 

And even in those tapes, he didn’t look like he was doing well.

The newscaster introduced the segment. And then they moved on to the interviewer, a woman in a dark blue blazer, sitting on a dark set in a leather chair. He sat opposite of her, and it was a bizarre feeling seeing him on screen like this, broadcast all over the country, seeing someone they knew personally being interviewed like this.

It was even stranger, having not seen him in so long themselves. It felt almost cruel. 

His hair was longer and tied back in a ponytail.

“He looks terrible,” Meis said right away.

Gueira hoped it was just the lighting or maybe badly done makeup or something, but he was right. His eyes and cheeks looked hollow, and he looked unusually pale. He looked like an uncanny nightmare of the person they’d met when he was 23 and sure he knew how to fix everything. 

He wore a nice suit and tie, dressed fairly normal, but his hands were covered by black gloves. Gueira was vaguely aware that something was wrong with his hands. 

The content of the interview wasn’t what they were particularly interested in. He was just there to explain what had happened at the Parnasus, to create a narrative, to defend himself in public after he’d had to do it a million times in court. It was just to relive the trauma for everyone else, again.

Gueira and Meis were both adept at this as well already. With the exception of certain details that were always difficult to get out, they’d all gotten very good at numbly listing off the course of events. 

They watched the interviewer nod at him sympathetically as he explained, in a voice much thinner and weaker than when they’d last known him, “Yes, it was like, a vast canyon lined with screaming, dying people, calling out as they were, you know, tortured. They were being tortured. It was probably-”

“They couldn’t ask him anything else?” Meis suddenly said. “The kid knows so much other shit. They couldn’t interview him about anything else?” 

Gueira just shrugged, his brain quickly shutting down and finding little in the way of speech. 

As soon as he started describing being placed inside the engine, though, as soon as the interviewer’s sympathetic stares started to become watery, he quickly found the remote and held the volume button down until no more sound came out of the hotel TV. Meis didn’t say anything against it. 

They watched him talk silently, expressionlessly, about a story they didn’t need to hear again. His face barely changed and his eyes, which were still big and pale violet, seemed to stare at absolutely nothing. They seemed to have gotten bigger someow, but it was possibly just an illusion from his deep dark circles. They were wide and staring, and they’d always been a little unnerving. Only now they were far more so. 

They both sat in silence and watched his mouth move, savoring any knowledge that he was still alive. 

\----

The next morning, Meis was sure to get a little plastic ring out of a gumball machine in the lobby. After almost three dollars in quarters and no success on getting a ring, though, he settled for a set of “Best/Friend” necklaces shaped like flowers.

With his heart hammering and mouth desert dry, genuinely nervous but still laughing to himself, he sat down across from him at breakfast. He watched him tear open a packet of strawberry jelly and spread it across a stale bagel. Meis took a moment to pour a single creamer into his coffee. He stirred it with the red plastic stirrer and took a test sip. It was far too hot still, and numbed the tip of his tongue. 

“So,” he started. “I gotta ask you something.”

Gueira didn’t look up at him, but he nodded and grunted as he took a bite of his bagel. Maybe it was a little early. He was still in his underwear and hadn’t shaved yet. 

Regardless, Meis reached into his pocket and pulled out the red plastic bubble from the gumball machine. He cracked it open and carefully placed it down in front of his very tired partner’s breakfast.

“Would you possibly be interested,” he said, tucking a long bit of hair behind his ear. “In being my best friend forever?” 

Gueira blinked a few times. 

“Oh, wow, your best friend forever?” he said. “You really mean it?” 

“It’s a serious proposition,” he said, a quirk to his mouth.

Gueira took another bite of his bagel and then wiped his hands off on his thighs. 

“I would love to be your best friend forever,” he said with his mouth full. 

Meis stood up and leaned over the cluttered little table, then, and picked the necklaces out of the plastic bubble. 

“Do you want to be the best or the friends?” he asked him, carefully tossing his hair away from Gueira’s breakfast and both of their coffees. 

“You mean I get to be multiple friends?” he said in mock awe.

“Ohh, yeah. As many as you want,” Meis said, unclasping the crappy little chain hook.

He then gently reached around Gueria’s neck, and carefully hooked the necklace together at the back. Then he kissed him as earnestly as he could manage on the lips before they both started laughing too hard. 

\----

A few weeks later, Meis was finally being given a permanent housing situation, which they were apparently all scheduled to share for the next few months now that the court case was over. However, Gueira was still being hauled off somewhere else for a bit. The thinking was that if they all moved into this remote location in separate intervals, it’d be harder to track them. Meis wondered if that just made it look more suspicious, but didn’t argue. He’d be in a house with his family again for at least a few months and that’s all he cared about. 

The house was nice. It was small, way out of the way, in a town that was barely a town. In fact, he was pretty sure they’d told him it was classified as a village. It was really just a long dirt road up by a lake, up in the mountains. But the house seemed nice. 

They would also be transitioning into having less protection around, slowly phasing them out of the program. They were no longer under 24/7 guard, but could contact someone who would be stationed nearby if they needed help. It all seemed pretty messy, in Meis’s opinion, but he was glad to have slightly more privacy at least.

Despite their claims, however, Meis was informed on a Sunday morning that Lio would, in fact, be showing up _today_. 

He rolled out of his bed, which smelled a bit like moldy swimsuits, and pulled on the same jeans he’d worn yesterday and a flannel over his t-shirt. He wasn’t sure where all the furniture here was from. He guessed this was someone’s small vacation camp that they rented out. The whole place smelled faintly of mildew. 

He looked out the window and checked to make sure the car he’d heard had in fact been outside the house, and was in fact dropping somebody off accompanied by several suits, carefully disguised in sweatshirts and denim jackets. 

Meis slipped on some shoes and fumbled with the screen door for a moment before trading out into the wild grass in front of the house. As he approached, they let Lio out of the car.

“Oh no, he’s bald! My poor boy is bald,” Meis exclaimed as soon as he saw him, picking up his pace to a jog toward the car. “What’d they do to your hair?!”

Before he could even respond, he wrapped his arms around him and held him as tightly as he could. He patted the back of his dull and worn biker jacket. He was still wearing those gloves.

“I had to cut it off after the interview,” he mumbled into his shoulder. 

Meis lifted him off the ground with ease and kissed him on the cheek. 

“Oh, and you’re way too light. Weren’t they feeding you? God,” he said. He realized he was crying. He realized they were both crying. 

He set him down, but kept his hands firmly on his shoulders. He looked down at him and he somehow looked even smaller than he remembered him. It was possible it was just his hair missing, as he had been given a buzzcut that looked like it had started to grow out just a bit. He ran a hand over his new short fuzz and then brought him into his chest again.

Once things with the suits were discussed and Lio’s things were brought inside, and emergency plans were verified, they were finally left alone. In the quiet, in the isolation. It was sort of familiar, actually. He expected that being alone out here would be uncomfortable, nerve wracking, worse for his mental state, but it was far closer to how they’d been living prior to the world blaze, anyway. They’d been camping in caves and woods for years. 

It might’ve been more overwhelming for them to be in a populated city right now.

Though, he hoped that this continued to be the case, for himself and everyone else. 

Before they had left, when they’d told him Lio would be coming, they’d told him to be careful of him, to call them if they needed help, that he was prone to troubling behavior. Behavior they were no doubt bad at and sick of dealing with, which he assumed was why he was here all of a sudden.

Right now, he was unpacking his things in the bedroom, which contained 3 twin-sized beds, while Meis laid on his side with a bag of potato chips. The sun streamed in through the window, and the only sounds outside were bugs and creaking trees. 

“So, you been holding up okay alone?” Lio asked him, smiling and sounding down-right cheery.

“I’ve been okay. It’s been kinda nice to have some privacy,” he said. 

Lio took his clothes from his suitcase and shoved what he could into the drawer under his bed. It was like some kind of weird summer camp. There was another room with a queen sized bed, but Meis hadn’t wanted to take that for himself and apparently Lio hadn’t either.

“There’s board games in the closet,” he told him. “Down the road, there’s a little corner store. They’ve got normal junk food and ramen and stuff. Internet’s a little shitty, but it works. You can get online. There’s cable.”

“Can I borrow some of the closet?” Lio asked.

“Sure,” Meis told him.

There was only one closet in the weird little bedroom, which Meis had already taken some of. Lio stood up and started hanging up a few shirts and his jacket.

“It’s kind of nice to be in the middle of fuckshit nowhere again,” Lio said. “Reminds me of back then. Wish it was the desert, but it’s nice.”

“Yeah,” Meis said. “It feels almost normal but not quite.”

“Yeah,” Lio said. “Is there anywhere to go shopping besides the corner store?”

“Nope, gotta drive to go get food,” he told him.

“Are we allowed to do that?”

“Yuup!”

Lio smiled brightly and Meis was relieved to see it. He put away the last of his clothes and shoved his suitcase up on a shelf above his chosen bed. There was already a comforter and sheets folded up on the end, which he quickly moved on to setting up.

“Do you want anything to eat? I already went shopping this week, but there’s a pretty regular bus and we could head down to the store if you want to get anything for yourself,” Meis offered.

“Yeah, I’d like to go get groceries,” he said. “It might be good to have some lunch first.”

Once he was finished putting his bed together, and looked about satisfied with unpacking, Meis stood up from his own bed. They wandered a bit around the house together at first, still chatting idly, and eventually left to catch the bus to the store, each making sure to take at least a pocket knife with them.

\----

Lio had not been shopping on his own in ages. It was odd to be in a grocery store, unprotected and vulnerable in a way he wasn’t used to, but also feeling free for the moment. Free from people watching him, even if it was intended to be for his own good. Free from people he didn’t particularly like. And with at least one person he trusted and had since longed to be with.

They kept very close to each other. Everything felt so quiet here. It felt quiet without the cluster of bodyguards. The world felt huge and Lio felt very small.

“So, you seen the other guy at all?” Meis asked him.

“Which other guy? Yours or mine?” he responded, leaning on the shopping cart as they headed toward the frozen food.

“Yours. Mine too, but I’ve seen that one a bit more,” he said.

“Mmm. I’ve seen him a couple times,” he said. “Not for very long. He’s not coming out here. They’re putting him up with some other people.”

“Ahh, that sucks,” Meis said.

Lio shrugged.

“He’s been having a hard time,” he said. “The last time I saw him, it wasn’t great. He’s getting therapy now, I think. He left the program already too. It was making him worse.”

“Yeah, I can see that. It was making me worse too,” he said. “They don’t know what they’re doing.”

“Nope,” Lio said. “The last time I was with the guy, oh she was there too, and he had a nightmare every night I was with them. Then he was gone. I haven’t seen him. I’m worried about him, but I think he’s in therapy.”

“I hope it’s good therapy,” Meis said.

Lio took in a deep breath and let out a sigh. “Me too,” he said. He opened one of the freezers and started picking out frozen dinners.

“I think someone told me he was living with a relative?” Lio said. “I think he used to live with his aunt when he was a kid and he’s back with her now. But I don’t really know.”

“I hope it’s good for him,” Meis said.

“Yeah,” Lio said.

He closed the freezer and pushed the cart down the aisle.

“How's your guy?” he asked.

“Oh, you know,” Meis sighed. He didn’t say much else. Lio laughed a bit, but he knew about what he meant.

“You’ll see,” he went on to say. “We’re engaged now.”

“Oh, yeah? Congratulations.”

“Thanks.” 

There was a beat where he wondered if he should say anything, where he wondered if it would make him sick to say it.

“I think I’m in a relationship,” he finally did say, tugging at his riding gloves and fixing his jacket. “I don’t know how it happened. I don’t know if we’re together.”

Meis sighed and he hated the way he sighed but he knew it was the proper reaction.

“With him?”

“Yeah.”

\----

At home they dug out some of the board games from the closet. They were all beat up and musty-smelling, and both of them realized they probably hadn’t played a board game since they were kids. Maybe cards, out in the desert around a campfire, but Mad Burnish campsites weren’t exactly Monopoly and Parcheesi hotspots. 

For a few minutes, they sat on the floor on either side of the coffee table and tried to set up a game of Scrabble. This didn’t last very long, however, as they’d picked up drinks at the store and those became far, far more amusing. Besides that, they were missing a part of their trio. 

They were quickly on the couch with the game abandoned, on their second and third beers talking about something that wasn’t all that funny. Still, they were laughing anyway, happy to have company, happy to relax. Happy to be together. 

By his fourth beer, though, Lio’s mood began to sink and melt. Meis didn’t go much further, and instead just slumped and nodded. He laid on his back on the couch, and Lio laid on top of his chest. 

“And I just, he just didn’t care. He just didn’t care,” Lio said, all of his vision swimming with each swish of his head. “No one cared. For years. For decades. No one still cares. It hurt so much. I love you. I love you so much. I didn’t want them to do that to you. You didn’t have to do that for me. Please don’t ever do that again.” 

He finished the last of his drink and set it down on the table. It tipped and knocked the other empty cans over. 

“Please don’t ever do that again,” he said, words pouring from his mouth. He found himself reaching for another can, staring at the back of his glove, but he realized the sixpack they were sharing was gone. “Please don’t ever do that again. I love you. Please. I love you.” 

“I won’t, Boss,” Meis said. “Don’t worry about it. It’s okay.”

He realized he might be crying. 

“It hurt so much,” he said. “He just did that. He just did all of that. He’s supposed to be a person. He’s supposed to be human like me. Like you. I love you. He just did all of that.”

He realized he was sobbing.

“And these guys. These fucking idiots. I hate them. They don’t know how to do anything,” he said. “Everyone in the government is a monster. I hate them. I hate everything. I hate everything.” 

His vision was wet and blurry, but he felt Meis’s fingers stroking his cheek.

“C’mon, Boss,” he said softly. “You used to be able to handle your drinks better than this.” 

Lio laid his face down on his shirt.

“I used to be able to handle a lot of things,” he said. “Now I’m ugly and everything’s cold.”

Meis ran his hands over his back, soothing and sweet and almost overwhelming. 

“It’s alright,” he said. “You don’t have to handle anything right now. It’s alright. I kind of knew this would happen. Say what you need to. It’s alright.” 

All he could do from there was cry on his chest. 

“I should’ve killed him,” he said. “I should’ve killed him. I should’ve burnt everything. I could have. I should’ve died. I-”

He choked. Meis continued to rub his hand in circles between his shoulder blades. 

“I’m happy you didn’t,” he said. “I’m glad you didn’t have that to go to court about too. I’m just happy you’re here. Lemme get you some water.”


End file.
